


Find What We're Missing

by Laisidhiel



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Hurt Peter Parker, Not Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Not Spider-Man: Homecoming Compliant, Peter Parker Has Anxiety, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Protective Tony Stark, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26091328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laisidhiel/pseuds/Laisidhiel
Summary: Peter is gifted the Stark Internship two months before he finds himself under the guise of Spiderman, and mere moments before a calamitous event. In the wake of his infinitesimal grief, Peter finds himself a far different kind of Parker, and Tony is the only one left he can look up to.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 16
Kudos: 44





	1. Some Kinda Sign

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU fic that begins shortly after the events of Age of Ultron, and splinters rapidly off from there. I have done my best to research timelines (Marvel? An easy to pin-point timeline of canonical events? Who knew it!) but this is AU, so I have taken some liberties as and when in order to have things make a little more sense. Peter obtains his powers towards the end of 2015, and has them for six months prior to the events of Civil War.
> 
> I will be venturing into and through canon, eventually, with a different spin on events and subsequent endings may not happen as precisely as they do, but we'll see how we go! It's my first time dipping my toes into Marvel fiction, so please forgive things for being a little rusty if they are. I have also done my best to incorporate American words and spellings, but some are not going to be correct - so forgive me, please! I tend to write novel-length, and update with semi-regularity throughout the week (in that, possibly a few times over the course of seven days, give or take?) It's been planned out, and it's a long one!
> 
> Author notes will generally run at the end, but for the first I wanted to give a little explanation and introduction as per the madness that is shortly to unfold.

Peter finds it hard to settle himself into the wooden-backed chairs. Like moss stretching out over murky water, it felt squishy, uneven, and he keeps moving, as if moving will rub the discomfort away. Instead, it only antagonises the unease further, and vines begin to twist up his back. He feels hollow, which is odd, with the number of things currently nesting in his mind, taking hold and quickly spreading like a hungry virus.

There’s not enough of him. There is not enough.

The room is more clinical than he imagined, and Peter isn’t quite sure _what_ he imagined. Walls are sparse, washed white and clear, with large, open windows encompassing the opposite wall, a shower of cities expanding across the horizon. It is this he stares at, rather than the people accommodating the rest of the chairs; they are haphazardly spaced in a makeshift waiting room, which strikes him, once more, as strange; Peter knows who Tony Stark is, a phenomenon in all _as well_ as name, and in a building as grand and expansive as this, he wonders why there is not already a waiting room.

Perhaps this is something else?

Someone is called and Peter shifts uncomfortably. He has tried talking already, the beginning of some awkward, tense conversation where he sees and did see the disregard; people years older than he is, people roughly around the same age, but all of them smarter, taller, bulkier. Looking better in suits. Peter looks like a twelve-year-old in suits and he knows it. Aunt May laughs every time he tries the ridiculous three-piece on when he considered wearing one to last year’s school dance.

He is plain, without the excuse of being a chameleon, though he might as well be; every time Peter looks in the mirror, through the hazy film of post-shower steam, he sees tussled hair, wide eyes, a nose that does not quite sit right on his face; all things _he_ sees and knows, regardless of meagre efforts, that there is no-one else to see them, either. May says he is “cute”, but she is obliged to, Peter thinks. The thought of her name turns the sour tastes to bitter wine.

As the room thins, Peter’s mouth runs dry. Saliva thins and clings to the edges of his lips. He swallows, lips as harsh, and with moisture evaporating faster than he can hold it Peter innocuously dips out his tongue. A quick movement pads smaller droplets into gnawed skin. _What was I thinking?_ He asks, though in his head there is no-one to hear him. Just his own voice, his own insecurities, his own sense of self-doubt answering back in a terse whisper. _What am I thinking?_

Eyes endless pools that spill, Peter drags them over the smoke-coloured gloss of the marble floor. Spirits of white weave indiscriminately, catching against frigid metal roots that shoot upwards to hold the endless reeds of moss-green chairs. It does not _look_ right; he does not _look_ right, here, amongst those far more qualified.

(When he was little, Peter reflects, a blind eye gauzed thick with grief, he remembers feeling out of place for thinking _too much_. He remembers hours of staring at his desk as words blur together, the algorithms of nuances claiming titles and lands that block out childish, playground taunts. He remembers cowering, shoulders hunched, a bubble all of his own, and a raw, hollow reconciliation that he is unable to be what they are without being who he is).

Now he is afraid of not thinking _enough_.

He begins to pick at loose threads, cottoned on to the edge of his shirt. The tie used to be Uncle Ben’s, he remembers, though he has never actually _seen_ him wear it. No – he _had_ never seen; Peter feels a tug, memories surfacing, drifting upwards through the blurry screen of seawater. The depths of the ocean, miles and miles beneath the glistening waves of the surface, are where he buries things he would sooner forget; foolish Peter. Is he made of water, too? A mind so endlessly expanding, with lungs that act as currents to push himself further ashore; that there is too much to control and too little to let out. That air is monstrous and suffocating and he dives, dives, dives a little deeper, down until he lays amongst the ruins of begotten cities and hides.

At least there he is unafraid.

Yet it was, and is for, Aunt May, that Peter wears Uncle Ben’s old tie, skewed against a pale, empty sheet, a shirt with no creases save the pocket on the left breast and who would know, under a jacket, resting on his shoulders. Cuffs borrow vines from the chairs and circle round his wrists; it all feels tight, uncomfortable, _wrong_ , and yet here he is because he wants to make her proud, more than he wants to make himself proud, and she is always right, at the end of all things: Aunt May knows how to make him feel better even if he does not wish to accept it.

Peter is pulled upwards from the depths by the sound of a voice; it’s clear, crystal cut slices through his reverie, just like hearing from underwater, and the voice repeats and he shakes himself down, rising to his feet a little too suddenly to keep himself level – Peter stumbles, his footing uneven, and smiles lopsidedly in apology. “Yes – Peter, Parker. That’s me.”

“Come this way.” She smiles back and he thinks – _this isn’t so bad_.

He follows, steps clean, and if he had not spent the last few hours studying the marble waves washing against the walls then Peter would almost be afraid of slipping – of tumbling down the rabbit hole but without a way to get back up (and it would be just like him, to make a spectacle out of himself when he is trying _so hard_ to be better than that). There have been too many nights where sleep is but a fever dream, too many hours of eyes burning raw, of both being tired and being _not_ ; too many days where his spine curves into the contours of his desk, pencils run to the hilt, pens without ink to spare and paper screwed and pilling like a tower just about to fall. Little but the sounds that bounce off the clasp of leather on stone tether Peter to the _now_ rather than the _there_ that exists in his head.

It is important, the _now_ – far more important than he has any right to deserve, and far more important than he has any right to ignore.

“Hello, Peter. My name is Pepper Potts.” The golden-haired woman holds out a hand and it takes Peter a moment to extend his own; he smiles, tries not to _over_ do it, because that is always what he does; he speaks to much and listens too little, then listens to much and speaks not nearly enough when it counts.

“Peter Parker. Thank you so much for this opportunity.” He feels odd, in the suit; the chair does not weave the same tendons of sinuous vines from the merciless congregation of reeds on the others.

“Please relax, Peter. I know this place is very – it can be quite intimidating, but we are looking for something a little different than someone who knows how to run a business meeting.” She – Pepper – smiles as she speaks. Trustworthy. Peter exhales, the weathered storm brewing inside his chest tumbling out. Instead of circling like a wretched gust of wind, it evaporates, peels into the air as if it were nothing.

Easy, he thinks. So much easier.

It takes a broad inline of her head for the light to catch and Peter realises that her hair is _not_ simply golden; it is interwoven with threads of red and yellow. “I’m just really grateful for this – for the chance to even come here.” Peter settles himself a little; concentrates on her eyes. _Eye contact is important, Peter_. They look like emeralds basked in sky-blue clouds.

“Your grades are incredible, and you are only – what – fifteen? So almost in your sophomore year?”

“Almost, yeah.”

“What is it you want to do?”

After one of those endless nights spent with his cheeks engraved into the sharp outline of led and whatever else clutters his desk, when he had awoken from a fever dream unable to figure out _why_ , May had pulled him into the lounge and asked him, over and over, the very same question that falls from strawberry lips.

“I build things at home. Well…. I restore them, mostly. Fixed this really old PC that runs like one of the new ones I saw out in the lobby, even though the previous owner said it was impossible, but it works really well and – it’s what I love doing. It’s what I know how to do. I’m really good at it, and I want – I want the opportunity to be able to build more things, better things. Things that can help people. Mostly, I just –” Peter cuts off, then, the shame rising like bubbles to wash his cheeks in red fiercer than that which stares back at him.

Pepper moves her head; Peter notes that she has not stopped smiling, even if a little softly, but she has not begun to speak. Instead she nods, gestures him to continue – and he bites his tongue in shame, his head moving slowly towards his lap and back again. Her gaze is as steady and unchanging as he wishes his own to be, but the shame is evident even as he manages to force the words out, like pushing a heavy ship out to sea.

“I can only use what I find in dumpsters, or left on the side of the road, and a lot of the time it’s really good stuff and that’s where you can make the best things, from items people throw away or think they have thrown away because they are worthless.”

“So, like recycling?” She prompts, and Peter nods; there is eagerness in his tone that fights against the shades of humiliation.

“I know money helps, but that’s – it’s why I think, I _know_ , why I would be good here. I already know how to make these things without it, and having more resources…” Peter trails off; Pepper’s lips form an arrangement of innocuous resonance, of something flickering and catching light, of something expanding and rushing to fill the room.

She asks him a few more questions; they are all about time, about school, about exams, about how he handles pressure. He does not tell her about how little sleep he has had leading up to this interview, about how is Aunt, whilst sick, has given him more hours shaved off the time she has left, in order to help him remember how to breathe the water from his lungs. Peter answers, tries to be himself, tries to be what he wants rather than what the others do. He tries not to slide off the edge of the muddy river into murky waters; tries not to inhale to fill his lungs more than he can expel the excess, tries not to forget how to swim when the waters begin to pool in from cracks in his conviction.

“Well,” she says, as the conversation pulls to a natural end, and Peter blinks at the clock set in stone behind her desk; they have been talking for over an hour. “Peter – I think you would be an excellent fit for this role, and for the company. We truly are trying to benefit more eco-friendly and sustainable models of technology and from what you have told me of your restoration efforts – it’s something I’m really excited to see.”

The words ring, like the final shards of a school bell crashing against eardrums, and she has to prompt him again, a nudge with a further smile, clashing against his own guileless bewilderment. It is not until he leans forward to catch her hand does he fully comprehend: _I’ve done it!_

Weaves and knots of reeds unravel and sprawl flat; the constrictions of his chest laid to rest and the water, gifting a painful sensation that lodges and harkens panic, dissipates and carries off as the tide runs out. Peter lifts himself to his feet, palms shaky and beaded with sweat and yet Pepper takes them just the same – insists that he _must_ call her that, now – and gives him an encouraging one-armed embrace, a press of shoulders against shoulders, as she shows him to the door.

“We’ll be in touch in the next couple of days with a proper schedule, and Mr. Stark will be back from his meetings to introduce himself to you personally.”

“Thank – thank you, so very much.” Peter gushes, the riverbanks spewing forth from a broken wreckage, but he holds the tears together long enough to depart into the elevator, all the way to the ground, all the way to the exit. He scarcely notes the shadowy figures of painted grey specks against the silvery tones of the marble that catch the natural light – and he would have recognised them, had his head not been sitting firmly in the clouds.

He drifts all the way home, the entire journey of the subway; May never picked up her phone, but he doesn’t worry – telling her in person is better, he thinks, and he loosens his tie as the carriage curves around a rickety edge. He’s surprised he remembered how to navigate to the call logs at all, never mind his contacts, and never mind the fingers that pressed into the keys to send Ned a message with a simple, betraying extension of vowels: YEEEEEEES.

He drifts _up_ the stairs, the tips of his shoes catching nails in the floorboards, the skies a perfect blue and peppered with specks of marshmallow fields. Peter reaches for his keys, then pauses, metal turning against the lock; he never locked the door when he left and May hasn’t left – wouldn’t leave. Couldn’t.

There is a wave of unrest that settles, like a cloak gripping material on his shoulders as it falls and encases, traps whatever restlessly fights against the surface. As Peter turns the handle, he is greeted by the cautious spread of light; curtains pushed open and dust settling against the glare of a muted TV. Aunt May stretched out, one hand sleeplessly hanging off the edge, bare toes pale against the dark cloth of the couch.

“I got it, Aunt May! They offered it to me right there, right before I could even get up and leave! They said they’re going to be in contact in the next couple of days to confirm details, but…”

His words trail as his feet pick up traction, as he rounds the corner to peer at the figure sprawled lifelessly. A remote shattered on the floor; one battery spun to the coffee table in front. Her eyes are closed and she could almost be sleeping; Peter tells himself this, as his chest once again gains weight and his lungs begin to seep with water, begin to crack and burst and swallow more. Fingers brush against the hand that cradles a photo frame; he doesn’t need to look to know what it is, but the rush of cold, like ice falling down his back, makes him jump; Peter crashes against the table and falls flat against the ground, eyes burst wide open as the dam breaks and the ocean swallows him whole.


	2. Slowly Swaying

_“You’re fifteen, Peter. Is there another guardian we can contact?”_

White washes against blue and red; a meticulous helical current. He is staring without seeing, blue films shimmering with wet pores. If he could blink, Peter would squeeze his eyes shut and watch the whispers trail down the rest of the blurry residue

_“He’ll be home soon.”_

_“He lives here?”_

_“No-” Peter stops; there is a speck of dust tethered to the curtain, a singular thread that knots him in place. If he moves, he will snap. “He’s out of state, but he’ll be back in a few days. It’s fine - I’m fine. I’ll be fine until he gets here.”_

The candy gloss of the marble expands, luminescent to the intrusion of silver-splattered elevators, clear in all but the metal rods that hold them firmly in place. Peter follows Pepper, his heart in his chest-thumping, merciless, as his peripherals shudder and shrink with each step. The awful, dreaded familiarity of full lungs awash with iridescent blue creeps over him, like a shadow silently lifting to expand across a broken wall. He recognises the feeling as they enter the elevator, the transparency a mirror for the stale, nightmarish glow of suffocation.

There was not enough air out _there_ – and there is certainly not enough of it _in here_.

_“Is there someone you can call to stay with you in the meantime? Or somewhere you can go?”_

_Peter doesn’t_ want _to go anywhere. He wants to stay here, amongst the pathogenic roots of the earth, and thinks that if he does that they will assimilate the water and swallow him whole._

_“I’ll call my friend.”_

Pepper reaches out and presses cherry nails into his arm. “No need to be nervous. Tony is – well, he’s as every bit as exuberant as you may imagine.”

He wants to mention that exuberance does not necessarily translate into thoughtful kindness, but even against the tides that topple his balance, Peter recognises another emotion fighting for clarity above the wretched imbalance of asphyxia: _excitation_. Like a single, sunset pink thread stitched amongst layers and layers of smoke, it bursts and spills violently forth, and the weight in his chest shifts a little lower.

“I’m still really grateful.” He is nonplussed at his ability to regurgitate anything beyond stammers, like a record caught on the polyvinyl chloride, a perpetual imitation of the same sound – _he is working for Iron Man!_

It is all Peter can think of when he _can_ think, beyond the haze of the mottled arm hanging sinuously over the edge. Beyond the cyclical outline of the battery, skewed at the leg of the table, like a picture slightly off angle on the wall. Beyond the ache of his bones as he sprawled back, allowing the ravenous shadows cast off the corners of the unit to consume him. He wonders, as the stifling cage ascends, why he remembers the battery so clearly. Peter has not gone a single night in the past seven days without seeing that arm, whereas his Aunt’s face is but an indistinct miasma, and the empty cell that he swears had scarcely stopped spinning pummels to the forefront, a single vein of light exploding off a sleepless mirror.

_The room feels colder, somehow, a parched throat drawing in the imposter of frost-bitten air. A hand reaches for the battery on the fleshless, diaphanous carpet, and Peter cries out:_

_“No!”_

_Fingers pause, curl inwards, fur bristling from being noticed._

_“No. I mean – please don’t worry about clearing it up. I’ll do it. I’ll sort it all out.”_

Peter rubs his palms against the grazed thread work of his shirt. Even as he tries to concentrate on Pepper, on the sound of her voice, it isn’t long before another rock tumbles and connects into a gap above all the others in his chest. He has to do something with his hands, to move each sharp-toothed stone one by one, otherwise, he is allowing more to fall, to cave him in. To shut him away forever.

“We’re going to work on you giving yourself a little more credit, Peter. You deserve this; don’t convince yourself otherwise.” Pepper’s kindness, a soft treacle dripping like honey and vaporising into molecules in the air, make the space expand, make the rocks slick, easier to move. He smiles up at her, effulgence cleaving through billowy puffs of grey, and he mumbles something, course and incoherent against the shattering of thunderstorms that crack and shatter and pave the way for an endless, resonant opal sky.

The doors open and the air rushes in, and Pepper guides him out towards a spacious collation of desks, all angled expertly against the ponderous, solar luminosity that swarms through the glaze of windows stretching across the back wall. Open, inviting. Space to _breathe_. Peter wonders whether it is water, not blood, that occupies the driving force behind his body, his innate capability to function, and whether or not he will always be ingurgitated by the malevolent lagoons, and whether or not he will find something, _anything_ , any _one_ , to lift the anchor to the surface.

_He doesn’t know how to tell Ned. Typing would make the words real, and like the empty husk of a room he swaddles himself in, Peter feels it, then – the inescapable loneliness, the penetrable loss, the desperate ache of nightmares tethering themselves to reality. He is hoisted here, like a ship docked for repairs, and yet the repairs will only desecrate the carved, wooden beams pulling it all together._

“This, Peter, is Happy.” The small of his back lacks warmth as Pepper’s hand motions towards the tall, bearded man who raises his chin somewhat subjectively in the young boy’s presence. Peter blinks up at him, taking stock (what an oxymoron of a _name_ , Peter thinks, because it looks as if the man is anything _but_ the connotation of his moniker).

Still, the pallid young boy extends his hand, and the wolfish grin, subsided only by the helpless apprehension, subjugates his composure. If Happy notices the beaded sweat slickening his palms he does not say; Peter thanks him silently, despite the inherent belief that the man either dislikes him without clear purpose, or if he dislikes him for the purpose of having something _to_ dislike in such a perfunctory role.

“Happy is going to be taking care of you.” Happy, clearly displeased with the not-so-much verbalised role of “babysitter”, raises an eyebrow. It is quickly replaced with a disjointed curve of his lower lip, and a rustling of paper-weighted wool as shoulders extend and push back. “Just to keep an eye on you, and make sure you’re comfortable whenever myself or Mr. Stark are not around.”

“Most of the time, then, you’ll be under my watchful eye.”

Pepper regards him as one might regard a mother suitably unimpressed with her eldest son. “Not _quite_ like that.” His palms flatten; he wants to hide them beneath the cuffs of his sleeves, but Peter resists and tries to copy some semblance of what Happy emanates.

There is a prolonged, pregnant pause; Peter moistens already parched lips, swallowing what little saliva his mouth can gather as the all-too familiar walls begin to coil and constrict. He feels himself turn to ice, beginning with the tips of his toes and shuddering upwards, like a jaunting, scratched disc struggling to chronologically present scenes. He belongs there, in the plastic, flimsy wrapped surface, marred and torn in groves; belongs to be broken and irreparable, and yet still, somehow, able to play.

“The boss just came in.”

“Good – Peter, shall we?” Pepper’s hand returns to the small of his back; the feather-light push steering him politely away from Happy, whom Peter departs with a lopsided smile and incandescent eyes, as if he is peeling protective sheets off of metal. Easy. Fast. A subdued, yet unexplainable retribution. Satisfaction.

With his tongue between his teeth Peter allows himself to be steered through waves of marble, past beams scattered against clear windows, moving up small steps that squeak beneath his heel.

_He remembers walking up the steps to the apartment, a spring in his step, his chest light for certainly tries; a polished smile that spreads across his freckled nose. The happiness that crashes against a wall of thick, impenetrable imposition._

For one fraction of a second, so fast and so thin it blinks in and out of existence faster than Peter is able to fully conjure the emotion, he feels the same as he did stepping out of the office. The same light-hearted elation, born swiftly of inexplicable news.

It is not Aunt May waiting for Peter at the other side of this door; it is not his vivacious guardian, ignorant to her own suffering if it meant dispersing of his. It is not the torrent of putrid air, interwoven like fine threads through a storm, that greets him as the door swings open and Pepper ushers him inside.

Tony Start is pushing the last crumbs of a dismantled burger into his mouth, of which Peter is almost certain the structural integrity of the item in question barely held up a fight. Specks of the doughy malt bristle his chin, and though he crumples the wrap with disinterested ease he does not hurry to remove all traces of his meal with the back of his hand. It takes Pepper clearing her throat, a scythe that cuts through puffy marshmallow clouds, for Tony to glance over in half-concealed interest.

“Tony, this is the new intern – Peter Parker.”

With a heavier press against his back, Pepper ushers him forwards. Words sticking to the roof of his mouth, Peter tepidly advances, his feet catching in quicksand despite the gleam of chalcedony basalt. This man is an enigma to him; an inexplicable perplexity that bursts cacophonous light and, in those brief moments where Peter is not thinking of Aunt May or the battery or the line of dust settled on the remote, he sees _The Tony Stark_ , the orbicular band protuberant in his chest, an irradiate artefact subservient to life itself.

For some reason, the heliograph also labours the cowardly gusts of fraught apprehension, and for the first time since Peter saw the metallic cages, he can breathe.

“The new kid. Wonderful. You’ve met Happy, right?” A hand clamps down on his shoulder; grainy, tiny specks fly off. Peter doesn’t _care_. His chest feels lighter than it has done in the past week; he would let Iron Man tip a dustpan over his head if it means feeling less as if the ground is swallowing him into an inky, adiaphanous whirlpool. “Now, he’s not exactly _happy—_ ” Tony chuckles, a guffaw tightening the ties of his fingers to Peter’s shoulder. “About being your – ah, _personal assistant_ , shall we say, but because you’re so young, and health and safety regulations,” his spare hand perforates the air, utterly impassive and apathetic to the words that roll seamlessly off his tongue. “Etc etc, all that _boring_ stuff – well, it’s for the _best_ , you see. Your – Aunt, yes?” Peter nods awkwardly, suddenly stiff despite the warmth of Tony Stark’s closeness, suddenly plunged back into the watery depths with reeds constricting fast around his ankles, wrenching him down further.

Through the emphatic ringing of white noise Peter tries to listen, tries to auscultate. It fizzles, a watched pot simmering, spitting febrile kerosene to scald brawny tissue from flesh.

“Would want us to take care of you, so that’s what we’re going to do. Speaking of,” he turns to Pepper, then; Peter watches the way that, despite the angle of her shoulders and a scowl pressing the ridges of her eyebrows down, she is enamoured and unable to stop the corners of her lips twitching upwards.

_A war on both fronts_ , Peter thinks, through a hazy film of tears.

Neither of them are watching him, however, in those few brief moments. Peter drums up a million and one excuses in his mind as he hurriedly brushes the edges of his sleeves against his eyes.

“We need to arrange a meeting at some point, surely? Show your aunt around, let her know how _serious_ this it.”

“Yeah,” Peter snaps up, his neck clicking in the whiplash that causes both of them to turn towards him. “I mean – I’ll find out when she’s free, when you’re free – she’d like that.”

Tony turns to Pepper, a brief nod with eyebrows raised in complacent regard for comprehension. The reeds cutting into his skin relinquish enough for Peter to wriggle his weight from one foot to the next. With hands firmly resting against his pockets, Peter tries to kick himself to the surface of the watery graves.

He does not know, as the two exchange words and he is left, however temporarily, to idly perceive and take stock of the room around him; a spacious office boasting windows instead of walls, a desk that isn’t quite a desk, for it sits impassively desolate, and if Peter believed dust mites to be a concept in this office there would certainly be layers of them here. He is enabled, however, to brush aside and ignore the ferocious sting of tears, as they are busy making hushed quips and he buries the evidence on the backs of his sleeves. Grit digs beneath his nails; Peter cut them only just this morning, clipped the ligatures deep to leave raw crescents and beaded red.

“Peter?” The voice calls out for him; it even _sounds_ like her, the gravel catching in her tone, the curious peak of enquiry snatching for his attention. Though he knows that it isn’t, that this is purely his imagination, the guise of grief an infallible cloak of descent, Peter turns with sunlight bursting from dimples. It shatters, as a mirror does when flung from such heights, as his peripherals adjust and he sees the bemused, attentive look of concern. “You’re just going to observe a few things today.”

“Unless,” Tony piques up; Peter cannot help but to pay attention to his presence as if the attention given by Tony is an anchor tethering him to the ground. Keeping him steady, keeping him _sane_ enough to breathe a little better and focus a little sharper. “The kid wants to get stuck in. Take him down to my lab, show him what Friday can do. Give him a little look at some of the new stuff he’ll be working with.” His phone rings, then, and Tony Stark departs with a wink behind veiled glasses smudged with iridescent orange gradients. His fingers briefly claim a tuft of material from Peter’s shoulder, leaving much more than a finger indent as Pepper hurries them out of the office.

A sullen cloud edges closer, and Peter finds himself cloaked in glacial spires. Like dawn creeping to dusk, his body turns to the frost-bitten dew of early morning brume, pretence all but shattered. Daggers line the walls of his throat, and weight, that was always there but not _quite_ , always pressing but tentatively _pushing_ , crushing his lungs. It is as if he has forgotten how to breathe, breathe even with the pressure of Pepper’s hand and the glow of a button and the clanging of gears grinding to life to move the metal cases down several stories. The wind flows, electricity parched, sucks, vacuums out and leaves him writhing.

_“You are safe, Peter.”_

_“Please, I can’t – I can’t breathe. There’s nothing there. I can’t see.”_

_“Deep breaths. Cold water. Deep breaths. You’re OK, Peter; I’m here. I’ve got you.”_

He doesn’t know how to make it stop. Without Pepper urgently whispering, Peter knows he would have fallen, fingers grappling and scraping for purchase, but he doesn’t know how to make it stop on his own, doesn’t know how to do _it_ on his own. How does he exist without the framework his entire life has been built around? How does he begin to build a new one when he has no idea where to start?

The thrumming only stops as the doors finally open. Gusts aerate and inflate his lungs and the ice melts and washes away.

He follows as if by a string, a marionette plied with twine. Pepper’s voice soars above the grinding in his ears, and he swallows, the motion shallow, and brushes his eyes again with the back of his hand. Breathing is hard – _so_ hard – yet the disfigured blur of his earlier vision (as bad as it already was) softened out, edges stretching and straightening. Air comes cleaner, fills his lungs, and Peter homes in on the cadence of her voice.

She points to several things. The first is a desk, which Peter isn’t even sure _is_ a desk; it holds still a home of a thousand scattered sheets of paper, pilled to beyond his height and then some. Angled shards of crisp cardboard stick out with scribbles and large, inkblots of numbers. Pens, some full and some half, with lids chewed, adorn any free space imaginable. They’re going to sort it out, she says, so that if he comes down here to work that will be _his_ space, but she dare not touch it because Tony has a place for _everything_ even if he won’t admit that is not able to work in organised chaos.

(It becomes a little _easier_ , then, to laugh.)

She continues to pull him along the vast edges of the room – which is far more expansive than Peter initially noticed – and he feels, as he wonders and follows and Pepper verbalises and patters titbits of information and locations and _insight_ , that the constrained press of walls bearing and peddling inwards have begun to labour outwards. Ghosts shrivel, shadows cower underneath innovatory spotlights, and his lungs proliferate and distend. The florescent lights of purposeful machinations are scintillescent and rutilant against the malignant eidola that mere seconds ago gagged and stifled Peter’s every movement.

His voice constricts again, as he tries to thank her and engage articulately. Pepper brushes him off with a kind wave of her hand, another press of fingers against his shoulder (he wants, so badly, to cry every time she does it – to stop himself thinking and feeling much of anything at all, because the gestures remind him of May, and Aunt May reminds him of a family he no longer has.) Instead, Peter resorts to cernuous bows of his head, forces his eyes away from spectacles and inventions and forces his fingers to flex rather than pull at strings already dangling precariously from ravaged threads.

“You may recognise this,” steps slow to pause at a large, ornate receptacle. Inside, bursting in slopes of blue and turquoise and tenebrific smalt subsists the Arc Reactor.

“The first model?”

He doesn’t realise how breathless he sounds, yet Peter does notice the incline of Pepper’s warmth. “The very first. He always upgrades, but this is the one that matters the most.” Pride could very well be a commodity in this instance, but Peter glances briefly at Pepper and sees the endearing sanctity in her oculi. There is no mistaking her congeniality, surpassing Peter’s wonderment by miles, Pepper’s predilection outranking his veneration. It should not be a competition and yet it _is_ , simply because to her there is none who could transcend Tony’s affection in her quintessence.

“This is incredible.” Peter wishes he could say more; he knows that less is more, and quite often actions speak louder than words, but he _wants_ to show how much this means to him, and just how much it meant to Aunt May.

“It is.” Poignant warmth spreads and Peter finds himself settled as if he is floating in a vast open space, with nothing but the gentle hum of a closing day shattering the horizon. “I’m sure when Tony is tinkering around with things in here, he will want to tell you all about it.” Peter hears the unbidden words, _in his own way_ without them being said at all; that Iron Man himself will talk of little else but the _right_ thing, never mind idiotic sentiments. There is an endogenous wrench that snatches, mycelium spores tickling and curling into wedged crops so that it is impossible to go in any other direction without them knowing. That is how Peter is, now, his focus narrowed on the Arc Reactor that reflects back poignant opals of cerulean skies. An inexplicable tug shackling him to Iron Man himself.

To say it _would_ be odd; Peter swallows and turns to Pepper, a breathless chuckle shattering the miasma. “What – what would you like me to do, first?”

“You’ve met Happy, met the man himself,” eyebrows raise at the infliction of the noun, a parched smile withheld from genuine content. “We’ll sort out that space for you, but for now? Let’s go get something to eat.” She pulls files close to her chest, russety strands fastening against the sheathed binders.

Peter follows her back up the shallow argentiferous steps, fingers grazing tabletops and surfaces within arm’s reach. He does not remember Aunt May, or the battery, or the sheet of dust dancing wordlessly in the flimsy grains of sunlight, does not think of them as he had just before – not until much later. When minutes have turned to hours, yet the stretch of time is smitten with euphoria and not lethargic monotony; when his hands tingle with breathless exhilaration and his eyes are fuelled with more than the caffeinated nectar keeping him conforming to cognizance. As he signs papers and watches and listens and eats lunch on his own atrophied elm table until Pepper walks into the room and practically drags him off by his collar to eat with _them_.

Peter does not abrogate the desolation, does not swallow with abhorrence or despondent tribulation. Does not think to check the creeping tendrils that curlicue ringlets when he hasn’t been looking. Has not thought to _check_ just how high the ropes have climbed, how unyielding they clamp, a bittersweet recollection of a memory long-lost to ardent tides. He does not _see_ them, and not because, when he steps out of the building in the bloom of late evening dusk, he does not _know_ that they are watching him from the shadows – but because the tether, the inexplicable pull towards Tony Stark, vanishes the very moment his shoes hit the pavement. Reality crashes inwards, a constant fierce turn of waves, over and over and over, pulling him down, down, _down_ into the depths of parasitic concussion. It is as if he is another piece of the puzzle lost beneath a pulverulent abyss, another cog in an otherwise spectacularly oiled machine.

He was _not_ alone, and now he is, and no matter what Pepper said about always speaking up and believing in himself Peter finds himself thinking back: _it isn’t that I don’t – it’s that I can’t._

Palms push into a threadbare coat. He ducks his head against the turning migration of pedestrian traffic; heads, ignoring the outcrop of taxi ranks, to the subway, several minutes off the bustling enigma of Stark Industries and Avengers Tower.

Someone shoves past, almost catapulting Peter’s ductile, bruised old phone to shards of discarded debris. His mouth half opens, ready to object, but the figure is gone, swallowed up in the streams of people pushing their way out of the subway – odd, he thinks, moments later as he descends the stairs. No sooner does his mind settle on the very definition of _odd_ as defined by this individual in particular, does Peter forget just why he finds him curiously esoteric, like something painstakingly fascinating and yet equally as repelling. Distracted only by the thought of this _man_ and his oddly luminous hat, which does not at all sit right with the shabby moth-bitten overcoat and large, grandiloquent boots, Peter continues. There is a pain in his chest he willingly ignores in favour of absolutely _anything_ that can give him the same sense of self-satisfaction as standing next to Tony Stark did.

The undergrowth of the subway is bustling, more than the surface streets at any time of day. Peter lifts himself up on to tiptoes, planting his feet this way and that, fingers splayed against cool, chipped tiles. He doesn’t know _why_ he is looking for him as much as he _does_ ; it isn’t that Peter is lonely or that he isn’t, and it certainly is not that he does or does not want to be at _home_ – because it isn’t home anymore – but that something felt _off_. This thought continues to pry at his subconscious as he rides the subway home, petering off at his stop with one final, curious glance about his person, moving only with the jostle of an irate passenger and a sharp-toothed shoulder.

An ochreous burn flashes against the blistered eventide. Peter cracks his neck with the sharp jump of muscles, his feet picking up speed. What he is after and what he is not after all seem to be irrelevant; he has caught, the first itch of many, spreading like wildfire, an inexorable toxin snared and sinking fast.

Aunt May wouldn’t like this. He hears her voice, the echo sharp and severe, like the ringing of a bell or the clash of symbols. Eyes watering and fingers twitching and feet, damned, pacing frantically back and forth, treading lines into the ragged, pile worn matting. She would tell him off, threaten to lock him in the flat _and then_ carry it out, switch him to home-schooling, barricade the windows and escort him with handcuffs to the bathroom twice a day. He knows it as much as he knows these streets, as much as he knows the capacity of his own lungs and the predictability of his attacks.

“Not a fucking word.”

A barbed acicular welt into his lower back and a hand shoots out to grasp at coffee-umber straws.

It isn’t the man he saw – Peter can see the grubby reflection pained in shattered mirrors. “I didn’t – look, I don’t have _anything_.”

Heart beating. Fast. Breath short. Vision blurring. Something _cracks_. He can’t move. Can’t. Move.

“I said,” the curved scythe punctures. “Not a fucking _word_.”

This isn’t a _movie_ ; there are no bright lights and Peter, whose world expands and constricts faster than he blinks, feels himself shudder and crack. Ceramic splinters lightning bolts and knees buckle furiously under pressure. Copper fills the inside of his mouth, his right cheek bulged.

_Beep._

Peter bristles at the soniferous consonance of his phone.

“Give it to me, and I’ll let you _live._ ”

Peter doesn’t move. Knuckles blister patches of albescent ash. His chest, burst wide, begins to crush. Rolls of wheels and car doors simmer to white noise.

The first blow lands with a scrape of a razor-edged thorn, then the puncture of a vigorous crack. He lands, hands first, grit and dirt embedded in blood blistered shears. He rolls instinctively, cowering towards the corner of brick forged in clammy mildew. _Please_ , he wants to beg – this isn’t how he is supposed to _end_.

Another and another and _another_. One. Two. Three. Four.

It keeps _going_ ; with each charged expulsion of the rubber galosh, Peter cowers and curls. He wonders, as what little vision he grapples blurs even _further_ , whether he has always been this small. Whether the human body is capable of folding in on itself, like pleating and creasing a piece of paper until it will plait no more. He thinks about Aunt May, alone in the room, and his stupid tie he snapped at for not looking _right_ on his small face, and thinks about the Internship, and about Ned, and about that girl with the sad looking smile who cowers in just as much overwrought habiliments as he does, and lastly, with her face in the foreground, the burning cobalt annular.

Minutes churn. Time _slows_. Peter dares to breathe, though he does not dare to _move_ – that he does is not of his own violation. The world sways as the force stops and Peter’s bruised back hugs the damp earth. Footsteps turn to thunderous roars and suddenly, somehow, he is _alone_.

Copper turns to rust. Feet scramble. Knees fall. He doesn’t know how long it _takes_ , but Peter lifts himself up, cinderblocks a rusty beacon. One step, then another, left foot first then right. He guides himself, rugged on autopilot, towards the dim overhead lights of his apartment block.

It is not until he falls to the floor as the lock clicks solidly into place does Peter realise the man never took his phone. Ned’s message is but a sour flare in an otherwise sweet-toothed treat; discarded, he surrenders, succumbing to the lethargic somnolence of phlegmatic sopor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have nothing but apologies for the length of time this took. I started at work, and thanks to the present Situation it has been unimaginably busy - unfortunately, it has taken me this long to find a new groove. Don't worry - it won't take nearly this long again and I'll be back to updating hopefully once if not twice a week from here on out.
> 
> Thank you so much to everyone who commented, alerted and read. My heart is full of gratitude for you all! As will Peter's be, no doubt. The next chapter should be particularly interesting...field trip, anyone?
> 
> This chapter has not had a beta read it over, for the sheer purpose of me wanting to get it out to you as quickly as possible given how long I made everyone wait. Please, let me know your thoughts, and I promise an update much sooner. It's tough writing Peter so sad; someone please give him a hug :(


End file.
